Joey Willis was looking for a change in 2012 after he lost his job in youth ministry at a Methodist church in Lebanon, Tenn.

The 2001 Midland High graduate moved back home to decide what he wanted to do next.

“I just wanted to do something that was risky and that felt big and important ... if only for a year, something that just drastically pulled me out of the world I knew and let me experience God and life in different ways,” he said.

Unsure about the next step in his career, Willis recalled a mission trip he had learned about at a conference a couple of years earlier.

The World Race is a program that gives young adults an opportunity to participate in mission work in 11 different countries in 11 months. Its parent organization, Adventures in Missions, is an interdenominational group that started in 1989.

Willis signed up in spring 2012 for a World Race trip that would leave the U.S. in January 2013. He would travel to Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Romania, Ukraine, South Africa, Swaziland, Mozambique, Thailand, Cambodia and Malaysia.

Immediately he began blogging about his upcoming adventure and raising the required funds. Though he wasn’t excited about fundraising, he found that his friends and family were happy to support him.

“People came up to me who were married or really established in their career and they said, ‘I can’t do this but I want to be a part of you doing this,’” he said.

The blog posts — which he kept up throughout his year of traveling, even when Internet service was spotty — became a way for Willis to include his supporters on his adventure.

“I love the idea of inviting people to come along and be a part of that journey even though they can’t be there themselves,” he said. “I didn’t feel alone out there, and I wanted to make sure that people at home knew that and could share in what I was doing.”

In a blog posted in November, a couple of months before embarking on his adventure, Willis wrote a letter to his future self.

Sitting on a couch with a Dr Pepper by his side, Willis recognized his own naivety.

“Remember what you thought it would be,” he writes. “Thank God that it is something else.”

Revisiting the comment a month after his return to the States, Willis reflected on what he learned during his travels.

“I went looking for people and situations that were a lot like me because that’s what I was looking for — I was looking for a place to heal,” he said. “I found a lot of healing in a lot of people who are totally different than me.

“There’s something basic and shared about the human experience.”

The West Texan, who grew up with ties to First Baptist Church and First Presbyterian Church, was admittedly unfamiliar with Buddhism, yet he spent hours chatting and laughing with Buddhist monks in Thailand.

“That was the big take-away more than any religious thing,” he said. “These are just guys, and they’re searching for the truth.”

He had a similar experience spending time at a restoration center for criminals and drug addicts in South Africa.

“Those were the two groups who I came across who were most different than me,” he said. “Every month we went to a different universe. It smelled different, the food tasted different, but the only thing that felt familiar was love and we were trying to make that connection that it’s God.”

Willis also embraced the diversity of his teammates. World Racers come from a variety of backgrounds and range in age from 21 to 35. Participants enter a country in a group of 50 and split into teams of seven people.

“A lot of intimacy happens really quickly because you’re spending every minute together,” Willis said of his teammates. “Even as a group just being stripped out of American society, we didn’t watch TV, we rarely had Internet, so it forces a lot of communication.”

Through his teammates, the people he met in every country he visited and his experiences along the way, Willis learned to accept his own vulnerabilities and imperfections.

“I think the biggest gift that the race gave me was just a way to be myself,” he said.

Back in West Texas, Willis is trying to decide his next move.

He might look for an open position at a church or he might pursue additional mission work.

“I feel like I’m sitting on a place right now where the whole world is open to me,” he said. “I feel like there’s so much of it to see, but I feel like it’s available.”